Duke City Desperado Read online

  He hoped Doc didn’t give them any reason to shoot. Doc could be annoying as hell, especially when he was cranked to the gills. There had been times when Dylan wanted to shoot him, just to get him to shut the hell up.

  Still no gunshots, so Doc must’ve been taken without a fight. That was a relief.

  For all his windy cantankerousness, Doc was the only adult who’d ever shown an interest in Dylan. His own parents ignored him, his teachers overlooked him, but Doc gave him a place to stay, food to eat, a reason to get up in the morning. Dylan had learned a lot more than burglary techniques from the older man, but he hadn’t ever thought to thank him. He wondered if he’d ever get the chance.

  What would Doc advise now, given the opportunity? He’d probably tell Dylan to stop feeling sorry for himself. To buck up and solve the problem and get out of town. That’s what Doc would say. And it would only take him an hour or so to complete the thought.

  Dylan shifted the box underneath him and tried to get comfortable. He pulled loose a rumpled length of brown packing paper and covered himself with it as best he could. Not much of a blanket, and certainly not enough camouflage if anyone looked inside the bin, but it made him feel better.

  It would be dark in a couple of hours. If he wasn’t discovered before then, he might have a chance. Slip through the neighborhood in the night, keeping to the shadows, putting more distance between him and the scene of the crime.

  He wasn’t sure where he’d go. He was estranged from his parents, who’d happily left him behind when they moved to Florida, and he’d essentially been homeless when he landed on Doc’s sofa. The cops would be watching Doc’s place now, so Dylan couldn’t go back there, not even to pick up his few belongings.

  Leaving him with what? The clothes on his back, which weren’t any too clean even before he’d jumped into a trash bin. One Swiss Army knife, dull. A cell phone that needed a charge. A plastic pocket comb he carried out of habit, but didn’t need because he’d recently gotten his brown hair buzzed to a half-inch bristle. A battered leather wallet containing thirty-seven dollars. Maybe sixty-five cents in change.

  Pretty fucking meager, considering he was starting a new life as a fugitive.

  Dylan sniffed and gulped, determined not to weep over his hopeless situation. He couldn’t afford to make that much noise. He settled deeper into his cardboard nest. Pulled his brown paper blanket up to his chin and lay still.

  Long time until nightfall.

  Chapter 4

  Doc Burnett examined his battered face in the big wall mirror. He knew police detectives were on the other side of the glass, watching him, but he didn’t give a shit. He needed to get a look at the damage.

  Doc didn’t believe in using seat belts, so the abrupt collision with the light pole had slammed him forward into the inflating air bag; it was as if he’d run headlong into a big white boxing glove. Both his eye sockets were puffy and purpling. His nose, normally a thin blade, was swollen fat from the impact.

  He opened his mouth wide and poked inside with a finger. His teeth seemed okay. He took great pride in his white, even teeth. That vanity was one reason he’d never moved over into readily available methamphetamine. Crystal meth rotted people’s teeth as quickly as it rotted their brains. As teeth fall out and cheeks cave in, users get that identifiable “meth mouth,” which is like wearing a sign saying, “Hello, Officer. Please arrest me.”

  But pills? Pills were discreet and controllable, with few side effects. Hell, amphetamines were approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The pills were manufactured by pharmaceutical companies, by scientists, not by some toothless biker in a mobile home in the desert. Doc had his standards.

  He turned away from the mirror, thinking he could use some pills right now. Something to block the pain in his face, something to jolt the old nervous system, so he’d be ready for what was to come.

  The only furniture in the interrogation room was a metal table bolted to the concrete floor and three white plastic chairs, the flimsy kind people use at cookouts. Two on one side of the table, one on the other, facing the wall mirror. Nobody had to tell Doc which one was his seat.

  He leaned back in the chair, cocky and casual. He still wore his own clothes—denim and snakeskin cowboy boots and his black Allman Brothers T-shirt—but his pockets had been emptied and his hands were cuffed in front of him.

  The door opened and a nice-looking woman entered the room. She wore a trim black pantsuit over a crisp white blouse, and her black hair was pulled into a ponytail, held in place by a silver clip. The Hispanic man who followed her into the room also was dressed in black. They were both in their mid-thirties, about the same size, looked to be stamped from the same muscular mold. Both had badges clipped to their belts, but Doc didn’t need no stinking badges to recognize the FBI.

  They sat across from him and the man gently placed an iPad on the tabletop. Doc had never used one of the flat computer tablets, but he recognized the product. He’d certainly stolen enough of them over the past few years.

  “You’re Wilmer Wayne Burnett?” Reading from a little notebook she took from her pocket, the woman reeled off his date of birth and his Social Security number.

  When she was done, he said, “That’s me. Call me Doc.”

  She gave him a level stare. “Why would I do that?”

  That put a chill over the proceedings. Her voice remained formal as she confirmed that the arresting officers had read him his rights. She told him he could have an attorney anytime he wished, but Doc trusted lawyers even less than he did cops.

  “I’m Agent Pam Willis and this is my partner, Agent Hector Aragon. We’ve been assigned to your case by the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Albuquerque office. Do you understand what that means, Mr. Burnett?”

  “Feds, huh?”

  “Attempted bank robbery is a federal crime,” she said. “We take such crimes very seriously, no matter how ridiculous the attempt.”

  Doc felt his face go warm.

  “Also,” Aragon piped up, “threatening people with a bomb is an act of terrorism. And you know how seriously we take terrorism.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Doc said. “Did somebody find a bomb?”

  “No,” Agent Willis said, “but even pretending to have a bomb can be a crime. Particularly if that pretense is used to rob a federally insured bank.”

  “Again, I don’t know what you mean. I was in an accident. You can see from my face that I’ve been injured. I probably have a concussion or a hematoma or something. I don’t really remember what happened before the car wreck.”

  The agents exchanged a smile. That made Doc feel worse.

  “Let me refresh your memory,” Aragon said. He tapped the iPad a few times, then tipped it up so Doc could see the screen from across the table. “This is security video from the bank. We’ve got tons of video from the scene, but I snipped this little bit especially for you.”

  The screen went fuzzy for a second, then leaped into focus. The driver’s-side window of the white van filled the screen, Doc right there in living color. No disguise, not even wearing his sunglasses. A bald-faced bank robber.

  In the video, he held up the gray garage-door opener—and clearly that’s what it was; how had he ever thought anybody would believe differently?—and shouted, “This is a holdup! I’ve got a bomb! Hand over the money or I’ll push this button and blow us all to kingdom come.”

  Aragon tapped the tablet to pause the video. Doc’s face froze on the screen, eyes wild, mouth open in a snarl.

  “Do we need to go on?” Aragon asked. “I’ve got another clip you’d enjoy. It shows the moment of impact when the van hits that light pole. It’s like slow motion until the air bag pops you in the face. The boys were talking about setting that one to music, putting it on YouTube.”

  Doc stared at his cuffed hands on the tabletop. If the feds were trying to shame him, it was working.

  “We’ve got you on every camera outside
that bank.” Willis leaned toward him, tapping her finger on the tabletop for emphasis. “Plus, we’ve got eyewitnesses, we’ve got your stolen vehicle, we’ve got your fingerprints on the ‘detonator’ you threw from the van.”

  Doc watched his thumbs work against each other, fiddling with his ragged nails.

  “We’ve got you,” she concluded. “The only question now is how many years you get to spend in a federal penitentiary.”

  He winced, which made his puffy face hurt.

  “You know what we don’t have?” she said, and Doc felt the faintest flicker of hope. “We don’t have your partner.”

  “My partner?”

  “The passenger in the van. The one who bailed on you.”

  Aragon tapped the screen, and the video of Doc vanished from the screen, replaced by a view of the front end of the Ford van as it pulled up to the teller window. The van was partly under an awning, but there still was enough glare on the windshield that you couldn’t really see who was inside. Then the passenger door flung open and Dylan jumped out, running before his feet hit the ground. Aragon paused the video, catching Dylan in mid-stride, his arms pumping, the hood of his gray sweatshirt cloaking his head.

  “You can’t see his face,” Doc said. “Is it that way in all the pictures?”

  “We’re asking the questions here.”

  Doc smiled, though it hurt to do so.

  “You don’t know who that is,” he said. “You can’t find him unless I help you.”

  Agent Willis tilted her head to the side, looking him over, as if deciding how to carve him up.

  “We’ll find him,” she said. “Tell us a name, where to start looking, this whole thing could be over a lot quicker.”

  “I don’t care about quick. What I want is a deal. I give you his name, and I walk away.”

  “Never happen,” she said.

  “Then I get a reduced sentence, some probation or community service or something. I wasn’t in my right mind anyway—that much is clear. Nobody in his right mind would try to rob a drive-through bank. It’s just not feasible.”

  The agents gave him stoic stares.

  “I had ‘diminished capacity,’ ” Doc said, suddenly remembering that term from who-knows-where. “Because of drug abuse. I was diminished.”

  Their expressions didn’t change.

  “So this kid,” Doc said, “he, uh, takes advantage of my condition. He tells me we ought to rob the bank. Tells me to drive up to the window.”

  “It was his idea?” she asked.

  “Yeah! This is not the sort of thing I would’ve ever done on my own. I mean, check my record. I’ve been convicted a few times, sure, but it’s always been penny-ante stuff related to my drug abuse problem. I’ve never touched a bank.”

  Aragon frowned. “So he suggested you rob a bank, just drive up like you were picking up some tacos, and they’d hand over the money. And you were so far gone on crank, you bought that?”

  “I didn’t have any choice!” Doc heard a chunking noise inside his head, the sound of a shovel digging him in deeper. “The kid had a gun. He made me do it!”

  The agents leaned back in their plastic chairs, making faces, as if Doc had unleashed a bad smell rather than an implausible lie.

  “The teller saw no gun,” Willis said.

  “It was all his idea,” Doc insisted. “Catch him and ask him yourself. You’ll see. I was a victim here.”

  She shot her partner a look, then said, “If it was the kid’s idea, then why did he run away?”

  “I don’t know. I guess he chickened out once things were under way.”

  “This kid,” she said, “this armed desperado who made you do terrible things. Does he have a name?”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  Aragon said, “Do we need to watch some more videos?”

  Doc sighed.

  “Dylan James,” he said. “His name is Dylan James. He’s twenty-four years old. And I don’t have the faintest fucking idea where he’s gone.”

  Chapter 5

  It took FBI Agent Hector Aragon less than a minute to turn up a mug shot of Dylan James on his iPad. He and Pam Willis stood shoulder to shoulder in the hall outside the interrogation room, looking at the squinting face on the screen.

  Dylan James had the glassy eyes and indoor pallor of a pothead. The kid looked soft, like so many young people today, gradually turning into the sofas they occupy. To Hector, who did push-ups and sit-ups before he allowed himself his morning coffee, such sloth seemed a disgrace.

  “Six feet tall, one-seventy,” Pam said, reading the description below the photo. “That fits the physical description and the videos. Bet we find his prints in the van.”

  “Check his priors,” he said. “Two B-and-E’s. One public drunk. Hardly a career criminal.”

  “He’s twenty-four. He’s just getting started.”

  “So he hitches his wagon to a weasel like Doc Burnett?”

  “Nobody said he was a genius,” she said.

  “Sure doesn’t look like one.”

  “He was smart enough to flee the scene at that bank.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not smart enough to stay fled.”

  That made her smile. Hector spent much of his workday trying to make Pam smile. It wasn’t an easy task. She took her work seriously and kept up a cool professional demeanor. She had ambitions, more than Hector, who was happy to be the hometown boy who made good, working at the FBI’s Albuquerque office.

  “We’ll put his face on TV,” he said. “We’ll have him by dawn.”

  “I hope you’re right. We make quick work of this laugher of a case, and it’ll help rebuild our reputations.”

  “There you go again. There’s nothing wrong with our reputations.”

  “Believe that if you want,” she said, “but we’re still suffering from that shoot-out. Everybody knows we had Wyman right in our sights, in broad daylight, but he still managed to nail both of us.”

  Hector sighed. Couldn’t a single day pass without her bringing it up? The day at the casino hotel still plagued his dreams, forcing him to relive the shoot-out with the mustachioed bank robber, Mick Wyman, beside the blue swimming pool. Hector often snapped awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He didn’t need her constant reminders.

  “Come on, Pam. It’s been over a year. We’re all healed up. We’re back on the job. Everybody’s forgotten about it.”

  “I haven’t. His partner’s still out there somewhere, and he got away with a million dollars.”

  “So far,” Hector said. “But he’ll turn up one of these days. He’ll make a mistake.”

  “You keep saying that, but it hasn’t happened so far.”

  “All in good time,” he said. “For now, let’s keep the focus on Dylan James.”

  “You’re right.” She looked at the dopey face on the screen. “We’ll pull out all the stops. APD, county sheriffs, state troopers, the media. Plaster his face everywhere.”

  “This kid won’t know what hit him,” Hector said, and he swiped the photo from the screen.

  Chapter 6

  A car crackled into the gravel driveway outside the recycling bin where Dylan James hid. He heard a car door open and close, and held his breath while someone crunched around on the driveway. Then a door slammed in the house and it got quiet again.

  Dylan lifted the lid of the bin and peered out. A few thin clouds still glowed like embers in the western sky, but it was dark enough to make his move.

  He pushed the lid open until it rested against the stucco wall of the house. Then he hooked a leg over the lip of the bin and tried to pull himself up. The bin tipped as his weight shifted, but he managed to get a foot on the ground and keep the whole thing from crashing over. He gently set it upright and closed the lid.

  His joints were stiff from lying still for so long. They cracked and popped as he hurried to the street.

  He’d spent his time in the bin trying to think of people who could help him, people he
could trust. Sadly, it was a short list. Best choice would be his childhood pal Oscar Pacheco, but the nearest was an ex-girlfriend, Carmen Valdez, who lived in a duplex on Morningside Drive, only a mile away. He hadn’t talked to Carmen since she dumped him a few months earlier, but they’d parted on good terms. Surely she wouldn’t turn him away.

  With his hood up and his hands buried in his pockets, Dylan was a shadowy figure of dark gray and faded denim. He kept to the darker side of the street as he approached Central Avenue.

  Streetlights and old-fashioned neon signs were plentiful along this stretch of Central, and he waited under the awning of an antique store until the traffic signal turned in his favor. He scurried across Central’s six lanes, head down, looking neither left nor right, then hid in the shadows beside a pizza joint.

  He hadn’t eaten in hours, and the pepperoni aroma made his stomach growl. He thought about pausing for a slice, eating it while he walked, but he talked himself out of it. Carmen would have snacks at her place.

  He was near Morningside Park when his cell phone rang. The phone was in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, and the sudden vibration made him jump. Dylan checked the readout. Local number, but he didn’t recognize it. He held the phone up to his ear.

  Nothing for several seconds, then a woman’s voice: “Hello, Dylan? Hello?”

  “Um, yeah?”

  “Is this Dylan James?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Pam. Is this Dylan?”

  “Maybe.”

  She sighed into his ear.

  “I need to talk to you, Dylan. Are you someplace where we could meet?”

  A shiver ran through him. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Pam Willis. I’m an agent with the FBI. We need to talk to you, Dylan. About what happened today at the bank.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “From your friend Doc. He’s told us all about you.”